April 7, 2011
Government advisers have endorsed the idea of a national pre-pregnancy screening programme for couples who want to know whether they have genetic conditions they could pass on to their children. (The Guardian)
April 7, 2011
The New England Journal of Medicine (Volume 364, Issue 6, February 10, 2011) is now available on-line and by subscription only. Articles include: “Effect of Direct-to-Consumer Genomewide Profiling to Assess Disease Risk” by Cinnamon S. Bloss, Nicholas J. Schork, and … Read More
April 7, 2011
University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law Biomedical Science Tower April 15, 2011 At the end of this program, attendees should have a better understanding of some of the fundamental ethical problems that are raised by – and … Read More
April 7, 2011
May 5 and 6, 2011 Denver, Colorado Now in its 15th year, the annual Colorado Healthcare Ethics Forum (CHEF) conference has become the premier healthcare ethics event in Colorado. With an emphasis on hot topics in bioethics and on the … Read More
April 7, 2011
With the proper culture conditions, mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells can spontaneously form the rudiments of a retina — the neural tissue and most complex component of the eye. The results, published today (April 6) in Nature, could help researchers … Read More
April 6, 2011
Twin studies have a solid place in scientific methodology for one simple reason: The DNA of identical twins is assumed to be identical, which removes an important variable from any experiment. Differences in their behavior, health and so on must … Read More
April 6, 2011
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida has a message for women who want complete control over their reproductive health: Incorporate your uterus. (MSNBC)
April 6, 2011
A military medical research trial looking into an experimental treatment for traumatic brain injury was improperly conducted, the Pentagon’s Inspector General recently stated. The military’s IG review found the “management and conduct of the trial were inconsistent with military standards … Read More
April 6, 2011
Today marked the publication of the new book Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution by Jeremy Bailenson and Jim Blasocovich. Infinite Reality gets inside all of the technologies and animation that we now take … Read More
April 5, 2011
When my father had a toothache, he saw a dentist in Boston who recommended a root canal and dental crown costing about $2,000. He decided to wait until he was in India, his native land, for holidays and had the … Read More
April 5, 2011
Advances in medical, biomedical and health services research have reduced the level of uncertainty in clinical practice. Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) complement this progress by establishing standards of care backed by strong scientific evidence. CPGs are statements that include recommendations … Read More
April 5, 2011
Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information comparing health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help … Read More
April 5, 2011
The end of dramatic exponential growth in single-processor performance marks the end of the dominance of the single microprocessor in computing. The era of sequential computing must give way to a new era in which parallelism is at the forefront. … Read More
April 5, 2011
An attorney for the U.S. government has asked a trio of appellate judges to imagine a magic microscope that would allow them to gaze into and through everything in nature, arguing that no company can legally claim ownership over anything … Read More
April 5, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 2:00-4:30pm Charles Darwin House Conference Centre 12 Roger Street, London WC1N 2JU Co-hosted with The Biochemical Society, the symposium will seek to address the ethical, social and legal implications of synthetic biology including the specific questions … Read More
April 5, 2011
Nature Medicine (Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2011) is now available by subscription only. Articles include: “Are Advance Market Commitments for Drugs a Real Advance?” by Megan Scudellari, 139. “Compromise Is in Sight for New Embryo Research Rules in France” … Read More
April 5, 2011
While the prospects of personalized medicine to help clinicians and patients better understand, manage, and treat illness as they affect individuals is highly commendable, this movement has recently been met by what I see as a troubling levels of boosterism. … Read More
April 5, 2011
Researchers say morality treatments could be used instead of prison and might even help humanity tackle global issues. A pill to enhance moral behaviour, a treatment for racist thoughts, a therapy to increase your empathy for people in other countries … Read More
April 5, 2011
We’ve had our eye — so to speak — on Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) for sometime, and with the invention of a new implantable microchip it’s coming ever closer to getting the bionic eye working on real-deal humans. The tiny … Read More
April 5, 2011
In a new research study under way at the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, surgeons are adding a patient’s own stem cells to the heart during cardiac bypass surgery. The goal of this research study is to determine whether … Read More
April 5, 2011
Consortium aims for hundreds of new therapies by 2020. Prader-Willi syndrome. Fabry renal disease. Spinocerebellar ataxia. Few people have heard of these and the other ‘rare diseases’, some of which affect only hundreds of patients worldwide. Drug companies searching for … Read More
April 5, 2011
Less than two hours of training over a few days produced noticeable brain changes in adult learners. Sometimes people complain when trying to learn a new skill: “I’m not that young anymore. It’s harder to learn anything new.†But adult … Read More
April 5, 2011
An advanced brain-machine interface enables patients to control individual nerve cells deep inside their own brains. In philosophy of mind, a “cerebroscope†is a fictitious device, a brain–computer interface in today’s language, which reads out the content of somebody’s brain. … Read More
April 4, 2011
Scientists have created genetically modified cattle that produce “human” milk in a bid to make cows’ milk more nutritious. The scientists have successfully introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk. … Read More
April 4, 2011
At-home pregnancy tests can tell you unequivocally in minutes whether a baby is on the way and if it is time to call your doctor. But, at-home genetic tests — which may offer tantalizing clues about future health risks — are … Read More
